It wasn't just British gangster films that really did for me as a kid, personally, it was British films in general.

I'm interested in stories about human beings. I don't care where or when they are set.

I learned my job from English dramatists. Tennessee Williams was no good for me, New York stuff was no good to me.

Wisdom is not having illusions, especially anything in your own mind that elevates you above others.

For me, film has been good because I'm able to work at top crack, working at something I love to do, in the only literary form in which you can still make money. There are no famous novelists, not as novelists used to be famous.

I don't like scripts leaking. On the other hand, the more real attention a script gets, the better.

You're not turning the picture over to a system or a process, you are the process, and the most important thing is to have things exactly as you want them.